LOUISE WELSH CRIME WRITER

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CRIMEinBOOKS - November 2008

CRIME WRITER LOUISE WELSH TALKS

November 13th 2008 12:11

In 2007 Scottish writer Louise Welsh spoke at a Sisters in Crime event in Melbourne. She talked about writing, about the joy of being published and about falling in love with your protagonist. The softly-spoken lesbian also gave her audience the pleasure of hearing her read an excerpt from her most recent book The Bullet Trick. Louise is introduced with the recitation of the couplet which opens her first book – The Cutting Room. It is from John Keats ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,’ – that is all Ye know on earth and all ye need to know The narrative which follows this couplet is in sharp contrast to the poetic beginning; as the narrator, a homosexual auctioneer, draws the reader tightly into his seedy Glasgow world. Asked who the ‘voice’ is, Louise has this to say: The voice belongs to Rilke, who is his own man. In some ways, although he’s not a detective, he is like a traditional detective in that he has a quest. He knows the city very well. He knows particular people in the city very well. But he has a quest that he must go through alone and at times, when I was writing it, I was consciously thinking about the detective genre. And part of the reason that he’s cold is because of detectives like Marlowe and Spenser. But perhaps part of what is not traditional about Rilke - and I know there are many gay detective protagonists - is that he is a gay protagonist who is not the murderer, not the killer. He doesn’t jump out of the closet with a knife and stab somebody. Rilke is very much out of the closet and very happy with where he is.'

The physical description of Rilke is compared, by Louise's interviewer, to Nick Cave and she is asked about the gothic sensibilities of this book.‘I’d been thinking about the Gothic at the time of writing this. I’d run a second-hand bookshop for many years. As we do, I’d come to a point where I wanted to change what I was doing but I didn’t want to re-train. And I thought “well I’ll teach some classes at Adult Education. They’ll let me in there.” And in the way of night school teachers, I was always just one week ahead of the class. But I became more and more interested in the Gothic and I think a lot of those conventions were very fresh in my mind when I started to write this book. Rilke is not quite your Byronic hero – he’s maybe more of an anti-hero. I really like him. I have an awful lot of affection for him. He’s almost a real person to me.’ Asked to comment on a rumour that, during the staging of The Cutting Room, she had been unable to look at the actor (also responsible for the adaptation) who was playing the part of Rilke Louise admits that this actor so resembled her character that when he came on stage she had to shield her eyes. ‘It was too strange. It was too weird. I don’t know how people feel that have had things adapted for film but it was just a bit too much for me and also, strangely, I really fancied him which is something I don’t normally do.' This admission causes a burst of laughter in the audience. Louise confesses that she was worried that, while watching the performance, she might actually start saying the lines and run onstage. Asked about the themes of sex, violence and women which is contained in this novel, Louise says that she was influenced by a book she was reading which explored images of women as the dead female form.'We see this image reproduced over and over and over again in advertising and fashion shoots. It’s an image that is used quite cheaply. If we look we can see all these billboards of very beautiful, very passive women that could be dead and I guess that informs this novel to some extent. As a writer, I want the reader to be shocked. I want the reader to know why Rilke feels compelled to search out the origins of this photo. That was part of the difficulty of this book. To make people see this image, to make them feel it yet not be doing what it is I disliked.’ On the subject of the labelling of her writing, Louise says that although she was aware of using gothic rather than crime conventions, her main concern was would anybody read this, rather than where it would be placed on the bookshelf. ‘I wasn’t really sure if it fitted into the crime novel genre and I think that’s fine because definitions and categorizations are something, perhaps, that writers shouldn’t think too much about. If you start thinking about that then you’ll start bending what you have to say to fit. When you start to think about the market you’re doomed really.’When the subject of the literary/crime divide is later raised Louise responds ‘I did an event with Ian Rankin and we were talking about this. He was, perhaps quite rightly, getting agitated and I was saying I don’t really feel that way. Maybe I should get more agitated about it but I do feel that the divide is getting less. Michael Collins, the crime -writer is a fantastic writer, full-stop and he’s been on the Booker shortlist twice so I think the idea that crime-fiction is not regarded highly is probably still true but I think the division is getting less.‘I think there are some very bad literary novels out there and perhaps if we start to think of literary fiction - whatever that means - as a genre then that may put things in perspective. But I think we name things in order to be able to talk about them.Louise’s second book, a novella, Tamburlaine Must Die charts the last days of playwright Christopher Marlowe, contemporary of Shakespeare and subject of deep fascination and speculation. Praised for its evocation of time and place and criticised for its brevity, the work is a totally believable imagining of another era. About the language used in this book, Louise says ‘Obviously people in the 16th century did not speak as we speak. I read a lot of literature of the period. I read a lot of historical dictionaries and made up vocabulary lists. And I tried to think about the way in which they’d speak.’Louise was asked to contribute to a series on dead novelists but was required to sell the idea back to the publisher. To do this she used the image of beautiful velvet being dragged through the mud.

‘I think that is a lot of what the Elizabethan Age was like. They have this fine art, this music, science is at its height for the period, navigation, exploration, politics, courtly love and then…MUD. Mud and shit and smells and stinks and piggish behaviour. So this contrast was very attractive to me, but also the parallels this time has with our own age because for me there wasn’t much point in writing a historical fiction unless it somehow pertained to our time as well.’Louise elaborates on the structure of her third book, The Bullet Trick, which she claims was fun to write, by giving a visual demonstration of the intersection of two narrative strands causing an explosion.‘The protagonist, William Wilson, is a conjurer. He’s Glaswegian but has lived in London for a long time. Part of it is set now, in Glasgow, and William is telling us what happened to him a year ago in London and Berlin.’As to the source of her inspiration for The Bullet Trick, Louise tells us that it began with a request to write a travel article which was to include a stay in the city of her choice - within reason. ‘It was the anniversary of the movie, Cabaret, so I said: Can I go to Berlin and check out the cabaret scene? See if it’s still going? Me and my partner went and we had a ball, and I think this stayed with me - these images and these ideas - and they were just kind of in there for a couple of years.’ It is suggested to Louise that William, like her other two male protagonists, is on a path to redemption and reveals himself by what he does and not by what he says. Louise responds'I did want to bring William down to the very bottom. Down to the point where he really has to decide well, is he going to pull himself up or is he just gonna sink? Is that the end? And part of what I thought about William was that he’s like a lot of us. He’s a lot better than he thinks he is. William has a very poor opinion of himself and part of his whole trouble comes from his inability to believe in himself. We talk about this a lot; this lack of confidence that I think was instilled into a lot of us through the educational system which tells us to shut-up and keep quiet.’After some talk about the writing courses that she teaches, Louise is asked: can you teach someone to write?‘No of course you can’t teach anyone to write. I think that a lot of it is giving people confidence, giving people some time, giving them the right environment and some tools of the trade. You can show them that wanting to be a writer is not a silly thing.’

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Comments

5 Comments. [ Add A Comment ]

Comment by David O'Connell

November 18th 2008 07:14

Screen Fanatic

Thanks for the excellent review MS! I've never read any of her books but am interested in a lot of Scottish crime fiction like Rankin, McDermid and Mina and always on the lookout for new authors to add to my ever-rising stack of books to be read!!!

Comment by Anonymous

November 18th 2008 13:37

Thanks for the compliment, David, and for your comments. I know what you mean about the pile - it never really reduces. I'm a big fan of talking books and I don't waste time with a book I am not enjoying.
Teresa

Comment by Mister Smith

November 18th 2008 13:38

MRS SMITH
READ THIS
SISTERS IN CRIME

Yes, that is me.
Who is Mina?

Comment by David O'Connell

November 19th 2008 03:40

Screen Fanatic

Hey there Teresa,

Denise Mina is another one of these gritty Scottish writers who's emerging on the international scene. I've read her first book, Garnethill, and liked it a lot. I think she's written 7 or so books now.............yet another author I need to catch up on!! (Dozens of those!!)

I forgot, I've also read Stuart McBride's first book recently too - Cold Granite - and it grew on me by the end.

Look forward to reading all your future reviews, crime fiction is a huge passion of mine!
David

Comment by Mister Smith

November 19th 2008 04:32

MRS SMITH
READ THIS
SISTERS IN CRIME

Hi David
Crime fiction is very popular and it has something for everyone, hasn't it? I love crime films and television too. My next couple of posts will be on true crime writers, though I know a lot of crime-fiction lovers aren't at all interested in true crime. I will look out for Denise Mina.
Teresa

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